Page 87 of Vilest Things
“It’s not your fault.”
Anton stops. His jacket is half-off, yanked in a fit of annoyance. “I beg your pardon?”
“This. Everything.” Calla seems uncomfortable—which is certainly a first for Anton to witness. She scratches the inside of her wrist. “Some people spend their whole lives pretending to be someone they’re not in pursuit of achieving a goal. It says everything about her machinations and nothing about you.”
Anton can’t help it: he laughs. “Thank you, Calla. Because I really needed you to try to make me feel better.”
“You’ve always held her in such high esteem, so yes, I did figure you needed it.”
Calla plunks herself down on the bed pallet capriciously. She doesn’t look like she’s going to shed any layers to prepare for rest, so Anton throws his jacket to the floor, then undoes the buttons on his shirt. Surely she won’t mind.
“Oh, please.” He throws the shirt to the floor too. He has no idea who putthat on him, or when. Probably years ago, given how the hem is unraveling. “You killed me. You, of anyone, can’t speak to what I need.”
“Untrue.” Calla unclasps her sword. Tosses it beside the pallet. “I killed you, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t care for you. I would have given up everything for the possibility of what we had—everything but one task. It’s not my fault we were put in a position where I ended up having to choose.”
It’s hardly an apology. It’s hardly even spoken with repentance. Yet when Anton stays quiet, considering her words, he resolves that it is perhaps his saving grace in this kingdom. Before him is the only person he knows won’t lie to him.
Anton crouches. Calla tilts her head, staring back in a way that makes the hairs at the back of his neck lift. Her eyes flit, but it’s too quick to track.
“And now?” he asks. “With the choice done?”
Cold seeps into the tavern. It isn’t as severe as when they stood outside, but the chill has pried its fingers through the window, under the glass.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
He’s acting without thinking.Delirium, most certainly,he insists. His hand reaches forward, takes Calla’s chin, and tilts her face to the lamp in the corner. Her yellow eyes flare back at him, as though he’s placed precious gold in direct sunlight.
“I’m warning you,” Calla says dully. “I will not be your replacement merely because you cannot have your first love.”
“Was that love?” Anton counters. “Is this?”
He thinks about the palace and its orderly sitting rooms, its silver candelabras. The twin cities, always tied to one another, the final battleground for a kingdom that barely won its war.
“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
Anton’s grip tightens. “You’re here because there’s a crown waiting at the end of it.”
“I have no use for that crown.”
“You were fighting to control it in the arena. After Kasa was dead, you got to decide who came next.”
Calla closes her eyes. “No.Iwas willing to let go of everything after Kasa was dead,” she says, and her volume fizzles to a whisper. “But you wouldn’t leave Otta. You remained tethered. Then you had to go and jump into August, and look at what has unfolded since. What other reason do Ihave, Anton? I’ve followed you across the kingdom because I can’t let you go a second time.”
There’s no venom in her words, yet each one lands with its own blistering wound. He swallows past a lump in his throat. The lamp flickers.
“Tell me, Calla,” Anton says. “Tell me how I could have survived if I hadn’t taken August in that moment.”
Her palm lifts. She sets it gently atop his hand, weaving their fingers together. It worms a sensation through muscle, down his chest. It burrows into his heart, an infection taking hostage of his blood.
“Maybe,” Calla murmurs, “neither of us should have survived.”
He has no desire to rein himself in. Anton leans forward, and he’s almost surprised when Calla doesn’t push him away, when their lips make contact and she exhales into it, letting two seconds, three seconds, four pass before her hand pushes into his hair and she holds him closer.
His birth body has been awake since he jumped and burst out of that carriage, but it is only now it remembers being fully a part of the world. It is only now, when Calla’s hand skates along his neck, down his chest, around his torso, leaving a trail of chills in its wake, that he knows what he has missed in these years occupying somebody else.
Anton pulls back a fraction. Calla lets him. She stares at him with those eyes, and he’s no better than a believer hypnotized by the heavens.
“Is this a death warrant?” He curls a finger around a strand of her hair. It slithers like water, glides like silk. “Mutually signed, mutually enacted?”
